Articulated Light: The Emergence of Abstract Film in ... - Monoskop

H i I la Rebay and the Guggenheim Nexus
Cecile Starr
Hilla Rebay, 1944
Jordan Belson, Music of the Spheres, 1977
Hilla Rebay, Alsace-born artist and daughter of German Baron von Ehrenwiesen, came to America
in 1927 and within a few years had painted the portrait of mining millionaire Solomon R . Guggenheim,
convinced him to collect "non-objective" paintings and started plans for the New York Museum that
now bears his name . Her role in promoting early abstract films in this country, though paltry compared
to the work she did on behalf of Kandinsky, Chagall and Klee, deserves at least passing recognition
in the history of American avant-garde film . That role is too often obscured by gossip, ridicule and
scorn . Was she Guggenheim's mistress? I surely don't know. Many women have been the
mistresses of millionaires but left no significant imprint on the world of art . Was she prone to
outrageous attacks of criticism and rage? It appears so . Dwinell Grant, who worked as Rebay's
assistant for about a year (1941-42), often said that he left the job to avoid having a nervous
breakdown . Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, one of her lifelong friends, remained undeterred by her outbursts
and even learned how to calm her. Many art curators have had wildly uneven personalities ; Rebay
was the first in this country to show a passionate interest in abstract art and to include film as a
serious, integral part of a major museum .
As early as 1930, Rebay had stated her intention to show abstract motion pictures in her proposed
museum. She preferred the term "non-objective," her own translation of the German word
gegenstandlos, which Kandinsky had used as early as 1911 . Such an, she felt, had a spiritual
origin, whether based on geometrical or freely-invented forms . When the Gallery of Non-Objective
Painting opened in 1939 on East 54th Street (originally it was to have been called the 'Temple of
Non-Objectivity"), she planned to establish a film center there . Frank Lloyd Wright's plans for the
now-famous Fifth Avenue museum included a basement floor devoted entirely to a Film Center and
Light Institute which was to contain an archive of pioneering non-objective films and a studio where
contemporary film artists could have free access to equipment to make films .' (It was also to contain
a continuing automatic show of Charles R . Dockum's Mobile Color projections, the engineerinventor's
original system of controlled, repeatable compositions in colored light.)
Three important filmmakers played major roles in Rebay's plans for the proposed film center: Hans
Richter, Oskar Fischinger and Norman McLaren . Like Rebay herself, all three had begun successful
careers in Europe before coming to the United States . Perhaps all three felt as she did when she
first arrived here : "I am too modern for this country."
Rebay's association with Hans Richter began in 1913, when her first painting studio turned out to
be next to his . Both were then portrait painters ; their early drawings of one another are now in the
Rebay Collection of the Guggenheim Museum . "Richter paints great things," she declared at the
time, and when he was drafted as a cannoneer in 1915, Rebay wrote her father asking for help in
getting Richter transferred to a less dangerous assignment . When Richter was severely wounded,
then invalided out of the German army, she wrote again with some concern : " . . .the poor fellow . . .
does not have long to live ."2
Independently, Rebay and Richter became converts to abstract art in 1916, and in January 19173
Rebay wrote to her brother : "We are now the innovative ones of an important period. My friend Arp
is probably the best, and Richter is also one of them-wonderful artists ." Richter introduced Rebay
to Eggeling in Berlin, and she was among the first to see their seminal abstract films . Richter and
Rebay lost touch with each other until 1939, when she helped him leave Switzerland (he'd become
a refugee), by inviting him to lecture at the New York Museum she then headed . For the museum's
film collection she purchased from him his Rhythm 21 (1924) and Eggeling's Diagonal Symphony
(1924-25) . Within a year or so, Richter had become director of the newly founded Film Institute at
New York's City college, where he remained for 15 years . The films he made in the United States
were financed in part by Peggy Guggenheim, Solomon's niece, who also had a modern art gallery
and collection, now administered by the Guggenheim Museum .
Oskar Fischinger had come to the U .S . in 1936, partly to get away from Nazi Germany (which had
outlawed abstract art) and partly to continue his filmmaking work within the Hollywood industry. His
efforts to fit into the routinized production systems at Paramount, MGM and the Disney Studio
ended in Fischinger's withdrawal in each case . Hilla Rebay, who considered him the best of all
abstract filmmakers, brought him to New York in 1938 to make recommendations for the planned
film center. He advised among other things, a half-spherical auditorium, "like a planetarium," which
would produce "a cosmic feeling of endless space without perspective" (The auditorium that was
later built in the Frank Lloyd Wright museum bore a striking resemblance to Fischinger's
recommendation .)
By 1940 Rebay had purchased ten Fischinger films for the museum's collection, and had shown
them at the occasional "film concerts" held periodically at the museum . In return for his gift of a
print of An Optical Poem, Rebay sent him a check for $250 . But when he wanted backing for a
100-minute abstract film that would cost between $100,000 and $200,000, that sort of largesse
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was out of the question . As Rebay explained later in her correspondence with John Whitney,
Solomon Guggenheim was not interested in film as an art form ; the small sums that she managed
to send filmmakers in the form of stipends, grants and print purchases were about as far as she
could stretch her personal prerogatives .
Norman McLaren, who had started his film career as a young Scotsman working in England for
John Grierson's governmental documentary unit, came to the U .S . as a pacifist at the beginning of
World War II . His two years in New York City might have been bleak indeed, had he not met Hilla
Rebay at the 54th Street gallery. When she indicated that she would gladly look at some of his
work, he quickly created two short films just for that purpose . These were Loops and Dots (1940),
both of which he made by drawing pictures and sound directly onto 35mm film . When Rebay
purchased a print of each and agreed to show them in an upcoming film program, McLaren went
home and made three more-Stars and Stripes, Boogie-Doodle and Scherzo . (Later they were
released officially by the National Film Board of Canada, where McLaren had accepted what he
called: "a perfectly marvelous opportunity," once again working for John Grierson .)
McLaren also gave technical and general advice for the museum's first film shows, and even set up
a fire-proof, sound-proof projection box in the gallery itself-which he felt provided better atmosphere
and surroundings than a theater. Films by Richter, Eggeling, Fischinger and McLaren himself were
shown at these "Concerts of Non-Objectivity." I once asked Dwinell Grant if his films had been
shown, and his answer was no . He'd been there only as the projectionist. Marie Menken attended
the programs too, as Rebay's secretary; at the time she was an abstract painter who hadn't yet
ventured into filmmaking (and when she did, her film work would be as uncredited camera operator
in 1943 for Willard Maas's semi-abstract Geography of the Body) . Menken introduced her friend
Francis Lee to Rebay on one occasion, and he was later awarded a stipend for filmmaking . Small
grants also were given to John and James Whitney, Harry Smith and Jordan Belson in the mid-
1940s .
"I had great difficulty to introduce film at all," Hilla Rebay wrote the young John Whitney in 1944,
adding that Mr. Guggenheim was interested mostly in paintings . (Readers should keep in mind that
in 1929, when Guggenheim had agreed to let Rebay buy a collection of Kandinskys and Klees and
the like, he was the pity and scorn of his wealthy friends . They thought he was throwing his money
away on worthless geometry from hateful, tasteless Germany, at a time when everything that was
important in modem art had to come from Paris .)
"If I had the means," Rebay continued in her 1944 letter to John Whitney, " I would myself help the
cinematic workers in order to make artists out of them and put them on the map-and so, at least
get the world interested." She urged Whitney to look at Fischinger's films, to learn form and space
relationships, to avoid decorative patterns . "The real issue," she concluded, "is to touch the soul ."
Five years later Solomon Guggenheim died, and Rebay was removed from the museum's
directorship . The museum's film collection of about two dozen films in various stages of disrepair
and disintegration was eventually donated to the Library of Congress .
1 Most of the information about Rebay cited or quoted in this article isdrawn from Joan M . Lukach's biography,
Hilla Rebay, In Search of the Spirit in Art (George Braziller, New York, 1983), to which readers are referred for
a full account of this remarkable and enigmatic woman's career. Lukach cites Harvard's Carpenter Center for
the Visual Arts as an example on an expanded scale of how Rebay's film center might have developed .
2 However, Richter survived until 1978, when he was 88 years old .
3 Those concerned with Rebay's later personality difficulties may be interested in knowing that for a ten-year
period she suffered one severe illness after another. In 1917 she was hospitalized with "an attack of nerves"
after which she had migraines for a decade or more . In 1918 she twice had diphtheria, a disease which
usually was fatal; that same year her tonsils were removed, resulting in throat ailments thereafter. (In 1919
she shared a studio with Rudolf Bauer, a painter who became her lover, mentor and tormentor, all in one .)
In 1921, at age 30, she wrote : "I did not achieve anything but infinite loneliness and hopelessness . . .
to be always so unloved, so despised and hated, makes me sick at heart ." In 1925 in Italy, shewas hospitalized
for three months and attempted suicide twice . At about that time she wrote to Bauer : "I have too much m me
not to achieve something great even if I am only a stupid woman . I will achieve something anyway, preferably
for others, but if not, then for myself ."
"I will go to America," she wrote in 1925.
"I must go to America." she wrote in 1926 . "Everyone says I should go to America."
In January 1927, she made her first trip to new York, ready to begin her mission .